Blogs

Tony Pearson is a Master Inventor and Senior IT Architect for the IBM Storage product line at the
IBM Systems Client Experience Center in Tucson Arizona, and featured contributor
to IBM's developerWorks. In 2016, Tony celebrates his 30th year anniversary with IBM Storage. He is
author of the Inside System Storage series of books. This blog is for the open exchange of ideas relating to storage and storage networking hardware, software and services.
(Short URL for this blog: ibm.co/Pearson )

My books are available on Lulu.com! Order your copies today!
Featured Redbooks and Redpapers:

Safe Harbor Statement: The information on IBM products is intended to outline IBM's general product direction and it should not be relied on in making a purchasing decision. The information on the new products is for informational purposes only and may not be incorporated into any contract. The information on IBM products is not a commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for IBM products remains at IBM's sole discretion.

Tony Pearson is a an active participant in local, regional, and industry-specific interests, and does not receive any special payments to mention them on this blog.

Tony Pearson receives part of the revenue proceeds from sales of books he has authored listed in the side panel.

Tony Pearson is not a medical doctor, and this blog does not reference any IBM product or service that is intended for use in the diagnosis, treatment, cure, prevention or monitoring of a disease or medical condition, unless otherwise specified on individual posts.

Special thanks to Anthony Vandewerdt, who sent me his version of this presentation that he planned to present in Australia next week. I "smartened it up" (or whatever the appropriate phrase is the opposite of "dumbed it down") for the technical audience.

Recovery procedures for single and double drive failures. A double drive failure on an XIV typically involves less recovery effort than traditional RAID5-based disk systems, and in many cases results in no data loss whatsoever. I provided details on this in my blog post [Double Drive Failure Debunked: XIV Two Years Later], so no need to repeat myself here.

Replacing the Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS) non-disruptively. To support either single-phase and triple-phase power sources, the XIV uses an ATS to take two independent power feeds, and distribute this out to the three Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS).

Built-in Migration capability to copy data off other disk systems over to the XIV.

Configuring Synchronous and Asynchronous mirroring using either the Fibre Channel or Internet Protocol ports.

Optimizing the use of XIV for VMware, AIX and other operating systems.

The IBM XIV Storage System is quite popular in New Zealand, with four times more boxes sold per capita than the other countries in the Asia Pacific region. I covered both the A14 model as well as the new Gen3 model.

My colleague Vic Peltz from IBM Almaden presented on lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina and various other natural disasters. Unlike tradtional presentations the focus on technology, Vic took a different approach, focusing on people and procedures. I was here last year when the earthquake hit Christchurch on the south island, so I was well aware that BC/DR was top of mind for many of the attendees. Throughout this week, I have felt tremors, and many of the locals told me that these happen all the time.

Introduction to IBM Storwize V7000

I knew I was in trouble when the request for me to present Storwize sounded like something from [Mission Impossible]:

"Good morning, Mr. Pearson. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, involves presenting Storwize V7000 in Auckland, New Zealand. You may also present the Storwize V7000 Unified, but it is essential that you not cover the SAN Volume Controller or SONAS products from which they are based upon, as you will not have enough time. The audience is very technical, so be careful. As always, should any questions come up that you cannot answer, the conference coordinators will disavow all knowledge of your actions, nor reimburse your laundry charges. This message will self-destruct in five seconds."

Well, I accomplished my mission in 75 minutes. I was able to cover the block-only version of the IBM Storwize V7000, with support for clustering the control enclosures, expansion drawers and external storage virtualization. I then spent a few minutes on the block-and-file Storwize V7000 Unified, which adds support for CIFS, NFS, HTTPS, FTP and SCP protocols through two new "file modules", with integrated support for backup and anti-virus checking. I covered both IBM Easy Tier for sub-LUN automated tiering between Solid-State Drives (SSD) and spinning disk, as well as Active Cloud Engine for file-based movement between disk and tape.